What do you do with a generation that has grown up learning to communicate via smart phones and meet members of the opposite sex through Tinder? You teach them the art of good old fashioned dating.
Writing for Intellectual Takeout, Annie Holmquist notes that Generation Z needs a lot of help on this, and she highlighted a Wall Street Journal piece featuring a professor who does just that: Professor Kerry Cronin at Boston College.
Cronin offered five dating tips for zillennials amid her class that asks students to try out an old-school date and also takes a deep dive into the Western Canon:
Interestingly, Cronin’s class isn’t one of those fluff courses – like underwater basket weaving – that many of us mock as examples of how higher education is declining. Instead, Cronin’s dating assignment is part of a course studying the Great Books and Western Culture:
One of her goals, Dr. Cronin says, is to help students examine the best way for a person to live, drawing upon the greatest thinkers of history – Socrates, Aristotle, Machiavelli and the like – as well as their own lives. She wants to teach them social courage: understanding the parameters of their comfort zone, why they are what they are, and how to push through them. She has required the dating assignment for a number of years but says the current cohort of students is particularly in need of the lessons. As it is, she says, many members of Gen Z are opting out of dating altogether. (WSJ)
So what is this bombshell advice that helps terrified students get out of their comfort zone and do this odd thing we once knew as dating? To be honest, it’s quite straightforward:
Ask for a date in person
Make sure the other person knows it’s a date
Keep it quiet – don’t publish the news on every social media channel
Keep it short – don’t drag the date on for hours
Limit physical interaction
Read the full Intellectual Takeout piece here.
MORE: Go on Dates, Get Extra Credit at Boston College
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